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Help:Style guide
Lifted shamelessly from Wikipedia:Style guide as a starting point; we should only include those areas in which we differ/specialize. Also take a look at Wikipedia:Guide_to_writing_better_articles. Basics *The first time an important Name, Item, Event, etc. is mentioned in an article, make a link by enclosing it with tags; thereafter do not link it again. If the link doesn't exist, the name will be ranked on and help judge demand. Article titles Entries from the Old Tongue Articles titles should only be in the Old Tongue if that is the most common way to refer to the subject at hand: ashandarei instead of black-bladed spear. * So we would e.g. go with Sea Folk over Atha'an Miere ? ** That's a tougher one. Can you run your regexp function over the text? I suspect gaidin/Warder and ashandarei/black-bladed-spear (or is it black-hafted spear?) will be obvious in their preference, but the Sea Folk call *themselves* the Atha'an Miere, don't they? nae'blis (talk) 15:42, 25 Oct 2005 (UTC) $ grep -ic "atha'an miere" wot1-9.txt; grep -ic "sea folk" wot1-9.txt 132 303 Otherwise, create a soft redirect at the Old Tongue definition page (such as gaidin, which should link to Warder). People Articles on people should be located at the full name (three names if earned from the Age of Legends. Create redirects from given names and partial names. *Should the main article for a Forsaken be at e.g. Rahvin or Ared Mosinel? ** Mmmm, good point. Maybe this is a place for something like Wikipedia's "put the article where you'd expect it to be found". Since the Forsaken have abandoned their given names, I'd say put them at their Chosen (nudge, nudge) names. I was thinking more of people like Mat, Verin, etc... good catch. nae'blis (talk) 14:51, 25 Oct 2005 (UTC) Titles and Honorifics Within reason, titled and honorifics should be included in redirects, to facilitate ease of writing articles. So Queen Morgase should redirect to Morgase Trakand, and Alanna Sedai should redirect to Alanna Mosvani. *Queen Morgase is fine, but I'm not so sure about [[charname Sedai]], [[Lord charname]], [[Lady charname]], et. al. It seems that could quickly become excessive, and that articles should individually format their links to include the title if desired. Maybe this is what you mean by "within reason" --Gherald 22:26, 24 Oct 2005 (UTC) ** Yeah, essentially that's what I meant. Maybe limit it to royalty? nae'blis (talk) 14:51, 25 Oct 2005 (UTC) Reincarnations To avoid spoilers, do not redirect reincarnated entities to their original/new form; create separate articles that contain a blend of the full information. This is the only way reasonable to handle someone like Corlan Dashiva, whose alternate identity is not known for several books. *Mixed articles? Sounds like a recipe for waste of work, out-of-sync articles &etc. We should just go with soft redirects, like Wikipedia. (For an example see Anakin Skywalker). --Maru (talk) 02:08, 5 Nov 2005 (UTC) ** Good call. This should probably be branched out into a full section on how to handle Spoilers. --Gherald 03:41, 5 Nov 2005 (UTC) Definite/indefinite articles When a proper noun is always referred to with its definite article (the Creator, The Wheel of Time series), include it in the article title. Otherwise, omit it or create a redirect to the simplified version. : I'm beginning to rethink this, at least for the Shadow and the Light. Obviously the series title has to stay the way it is. Input? nae'blis (talk) 08:07, 27 Oct 2005 (UTC) Output: $ for i in Creator Light Shadow Dark; do grep "alnum: *The $i" wot1-9.txt; done When the coach drew up in front of The Light of Truth, Juilin hopped down to open the In this sequel to the phenomenal New York Times bestseller The Shadow Rising, Robert Jordan * Ch. 33 - A Message From The Dark Basically I think these should be included as [[The Article Name]] if and only if the name is capitalized that way by the books. [[the Article Name]] doesn't make any sense, thankfully. Moreover, I strongly advocate plaintext prefixing of links inside articlespace with these, where appropriate (see project:chapter summaries). Quick mockup example: Characters A Myrddraal - by the wolf name Neverborn A Myrddraal - as a Fade Redirects can be created liberally, though repeated use of redirects from articlespace is frowned upon; so don't link to e.g. [[The Creator]] carelessly. Rather: the Creator The Creator The first is generally preferable, and should be capitalized using normal sentence-starting rules; the second should only be used if there is a good stylistic reason for the full thing to be a link..... I can't think of any offhand, but they may exist --Gherald 08:51, 27 Oct 2005 (UTC) Capital letters Although the MediaWiki software requires that all articles begin with a capital letter, links and references in text should use the correct capitalization. If necessary, include the template at the beginning of the article to display it correctly. This should only be used for proper nouns such as gholam, not general nouns such as blademaster. * I object that template in favor of requiring the first (or at least, one of the first) nouns of all such articles to be a bold/italic lowercase version of the erroneous [[Articlename]]. For example: A grolm is a bear-sized creature..... or ''grolmare bear-sized creatures..... Funny you should say that about gholam. I disagree: it's not a proper noun AFAIK, and should not be capitalized any more than golems are. EWoT disagrees with both of us: they capitalize it. --Gherald 09:21, 27 Oct 2005 (UTC) : Actually, I think I wrote that badly; I think I was actually saying "words for which we do not have a real world reference", but it's kind of moot now. I was working at the time under the hypothesis that we could avoid the repetitious '=Article Header=''' An article header is a mythological beast.... syntax, but that does not seem to be practical. Maybe these Wikipedia folks know what they're doing, after all... feel free to withdraw/rewrite this section. nae'blis (talk) 14:31, 27 Oct 2005 (UTC) :: It may be repetitios (though it's worth pointing out the article header is provided aumomatically, so it's really only typed once in the article) , but it also takes up much less space and is less jarring than . I'll rewrite this section sometime later, if there's no further comment. --Gherald 18:20, 27 Oct 2005 (UTC) Headings Avoid using the H1 style (=Header=) within an article's text unless you have a very good reason; this should be reserved for the (automatically generated) article title. Proper nouns Prophecies :See Quotations Prophecies should be clearly demarcated from normal text, and not editted in anyway (that is, when you are formatting them, leave any punctuation marks ''out and after the quotes; that is, it should go: "inspired by her prophecy "From this day Andor marches toward pain and division. The Shadow has yet to darken to its blackest, and I cannot see if the Light will come after.", Elaida became an enemy to Rand al'Thor", not "inspired by her prophecy, "From this day Andor marches toward pain and division. The Shadow has yet to darken to its blackest, and I cannot see if the Light will come after,", Elaida became an enemy to Rand al'Thor". For long, full quotations, one should go to a newline, indent, and italicize, like so: :"In the last, lorn fight :'gainst the fall of long night, :the mountains stand guard, :''and the dead shall be ward, :''for the grave is no bar to my call." Hmm, isn't this just the sort of thing we have Template:Quote for? --Gherald 03:51, 5 Nov 2005 (UTC) : ::Well, the quote section does not appear to deal with inline quotes yet. So.... /me shrugs. --Maru (talk) 00:37, 6 Nov 2005 (UTC) ::: I think Template:Quote is good for those sorts of things, but a style guide needs to be in place too; we can't/shouldn't use templates for everything (people won't remember them, anyway). nae'blis (talk) 04:09, 7 Nov 2005 (UTC) : Also, Min's viewings don't fall in the usual style of prophecy, but they may need to be addressed here. nae'blis (talk) 04:09, 7 Nov 2005 (UTC) Calendars Animals, plants, and other organisms Directions and regions Extradimensional spaces Italics Book Titles Book titles should always be italicized. If you are referring to a book by its number in the sequence (Book 12, or "the prequel novel"), do not use italics. Chapter titles Old Tongue When creating an article for a word in the Old Tongue (or defining it inline, such as the ashandarei article), utilize the template to provide a consistent definition style. Old Tongue words should always be italicized. Prophecies :See Quotations Prophecies should be clearly demarcated from normal text, and not editted in anyway (that is, when you are formatting them, leave any punctuation marks ''out and after the quotes; that is, it should go: "inspired by her prophecy "From this day Andor marches toward pain and division. The Shadow has yet to darken to its blackest, and I cannot see if the Light will come after.", Elaida became an enemy to Rand al'Thor", not "inspired by her prophecy, "From this day Andor marches toward pain and division. The Shadow has yet to darken to its blackest, and I cannot see if the Light will come after,", Elaida became an enemy to Rand al'Thor". For long, full quotations, one should go to a newline, indent, and italicize, like so: :"In the last, lorn fight :'gainst the fall of long night, :the mountains stand guard, :''and the dead shall be ward, :''for the grave is no bar to my call." Hmm, isn't this just the sort of thing we have Template:Quote for? --Gherald 03:51, 5 Nov 2005 (UTC) : ::Well, the quote section does not appear to deal with inline quotes yet. So.... /me shrugs. --Maru (talk) 00:37, 6 Nov 2005 (UTC) ::: I think Template:Quote is good for those sorts of things, but a style guide needs to be in place too; we can't/shouldn't use templates for everything (people won't remember them, anyway). nae'blis (talk) 04:09, 7 Nov 2005 (UTC) : Also, Min's viewings don't fall in the usual style of prophecy, but they may need to be addressed here. nae'blis (talk) 04:09, 7 Nov 2005 (UTC) IMO relevant parts of the above should just be integrated into the section on quotations below. --Gherald 07:03, 7 Nov 2005 (UTC) Quotations Comprehensive lists of quotations belong on Wikiquote:The Wheel of Time. But you are encouraged to freely insert relevant ones into articles using the tag, for example: Relevancy can range from simple comic relief to somber pronouncements on issues of grave importance to the series. For example, a prophecy: : Pronunciation Sections Introduction Lead section "Sources" Out-of-character information in normal namespace articles should be reserved for the Sources section, near the bottom. Articles in Category:Creators and Category:Books are exempt from this, for obvious reasons. *Should this be sources? Every wiki I've seen seem to all be standardizing on "References". --Maru (talk) 02:13, 5 Nov 2005 (UTC) Other sections Style Guide